


The rug burns on both my knees

by chatoyance



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Adventure
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:49:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1233889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chatoyance/pseuds/chatoyance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We could study together, like a study group or something. Bring the books and come on over, Sora. We’ve got spinach cake here and everything.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The rug burns on both my knees

**Author's Note:**

> Thirteen years ago, someone decided to put One Week on the soundtrack for the Digimon movie. Two years ago, I started writing this thing. Today, I finished it.

Bright. It was too bright.

“Shut that light off,” he grumbled, throwing an arm over his eyes, and from somewhere on the other side of the room he heard a sigh and the sound of a cloth bag dropping softly to the floor.

“Tai, you said you were going to study. You can’t study if you’re asleep,” his mother said, her voice much closer to him. Suddenly, the sheet was yanked back and Tai opened his eyes.

“Up. You said you would _study_ if we let you stay home, so you’d better get to it,” his mother said, picking up the cloth overnight bag from the floor. She turned around in the doorway, “Otherwise, you’re coming to visit Grandma with the rest of us.”

Tai sat up with a groan, “I’m up, I’m up.” He scratched at his head, his fingers weaving through his matted hair as he yawned. He didn’t feel like visiting his grandmother at all; she always prodded at his hair and told him to get it cut, she always asked him why he didn’t have a girlfriend yet, she always made him sleep on the lumpy old couch in the living room that smelled like dust and _old_. Besides, he mused, he had that big biology test on Monday, and it made the perfect excuse to stay home while his parents dragged Kari out to visit Grandma (she liked visits with Grandma, though. Tai couldn’t figure out what was so fun about sitting by the front window drinking tea in silence, but Kari’s interests were sort of weird anyway.)

After he had pulled on a pair of socks, Tai left his room and almost ran straight into Kari, who had been walking behind their father on their way to the door. She was carrying a big box in her arms.

“Whoa, what’s that for?”

Kari glanced down at the box with her eyes, “Oh, it’s just a few things mom wanted to take over for Grandma to mend. I think there’s about five of your shirts in here with holes in them.”

Tai grinned as he walked past her toward the kitchen, “Hey, it happens. Have fun with Grandma today. Try not to die of _boredom_.” He turned the corner and looked up to see his mother staring down at him. She made a face, her mouth turning up in the corner as if she was thinking about whether leaving him home was a good idea or not.

After a moment, she sighed and gestured toward the refrigerator, “There’s a spinach cake in the fridge for when you get hungry, and there should be some corn juice somewhere in the back that’s still good. You know Grandma’s phone number if you need us, alright?”

“Not a problem,” Tai said, leaning an arm on the kitchen counter as his mother walked past him, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.”

“Hmm,” she turned around in the doorway for a moment, “And don’t forget to study, Tai.”

“Will do!” Tai gave an overenthusiastic salute as his mother smiled and shut the front door.

He waited a good thirty seconds before he moved again. First, he grabbed the cordless phone from its receiver, and then he opened the refrigerator to snatch a cola from the shelf. Tai climbed over the back of the couch (something his mother always yelled at him for, but she wasn’t here _was she_?) and settled in, cracking open the cola and dialling numbers on the phone with one hand.

“Hello Mrs. Takenouchi, can I speak to Sora? Thanks.” He took a swig of cola during the silence, and when he heard Sora’s voice on the other end of the line, he swallowed a bit too fast and started coughing.

“Are you choking?”

“Ah—No, I’m fine. Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to come over?”

Tai heard Sora make that sound she makes when she’s pretending to think really hard about something, and he could visualize the face she would make when she does it – she was probably looking to the side a bit, her head tilted to the right and her mouth twisted to one side. “I don’t know, Tai. I really have to study for that test on Monday.”

“We could study together, like a study group or something. Bring the books and come on over, Sora. We’ve got spinach cake here and everything,” he added, grinning.

He could hear the smile in her voice when she answered him, “Oh boy, how could I pass _that_ up?” she paused for a moment, then sighed lightly, “Oh fine, I’ll be over in a bit.”

“Great. You’d better hurry before I eat all of this delicious cake.”

Sora laughed and hung up, and Tai smiled and put the phone down on the coffee table.

 

\--

 

“Okay, _Ursus Horribilis_?”

“Uh, I dunno,” Tai mumbled through a mouthful of potato chips, staring at the tv screen from his spot on the rug. Sora was perched on the couch, a biology textbook spread across her knee, and she nudged him lightly in the shoulder with her foot, “You aren’t even listening to me, are you?”

“What?” he said, his eyes still not leaving the screen. There was a pause, and he craned his neck to look up at her, “Wait, did you say something?”

“ _Ursus horribilis_.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s a scientific name,” Sora sighed, “Tai, you’re going to -”

“Wait, hang on a sec,” he said, raising a hand to silence her, his eyes focused on the television screen, “they’re going into the abandoned building, this is gonna get good.”

Sora let out an irritated sort of sigh, and put her book aside, rising from the couch to reach for the remote control on the coffee table. This was the moment when Tai finally sprung into action, grabbing her arm with his potato chip greased fingers with a yelp of “nope!” Sora stumbled with a squeak, twisting awkwardly and falling onto one knee while Tai rose from the floor to make a grab for the remote with a grin on his face. Sora then grabbed him around the waist and pulled him onto the floor with her, his knees dragging across the rug as he tried to wriggle out of her arms, and with some difficulty, she had managed to roll him over onto his back and positioned herself over him, her knees on either side of his waist and her hands pinning his wrists to the floor.

“Looks like I win,” she said between breaths with an uneven smile, and he said nothing, staring up at her with this dumbfounded look he sometimes got when something had caught him by surprise. There was a moment of silence, and Sora suddenly became very aware of their position, and quickly backed off to grab the remote control, turning the television off.

Tai remained motionless on the floor for a few seconds before sitting up and clearing his throat, and he could feel the tension in the room weighing down on his lungs when he tried to breathe. He shook it off, directing a crooked smile in Sora’s direction and muttering, “Party pooper.”

Sora laughed a short, uncomfortable laugh and sat down on the couch again, placing the remote behind her back and opening up the textbook again. “Sorry, Tai, but you _did_ invite me over here to study.”

Tai plopped unceremoniously onto the couch beside her, “Well, actually, I invited you to partake in some of my mom’s spinach cake—which you haven’t even touched, might I add—and I said maybe we could study a bit. But right now I want to watch _Ghost Trappers_ , so if you’d just give me that remote...”

Tai leaned toward her a little bit, trying to reach behind her back for the remote, but she grabbed his forearm before he could. “Maybe after a bit of studying we can watch the end,” she said, and growing more irritated with each passing moment, she let go of his wrist violently, jerking her hand away.

Tai sighed and turned toward her, crossing his legs and leaning forward, “Alright then, teach me.”

“I’m not here to _teach_ you, Tai. You should already know this stuff!” Sora huffed, snapping the book shut so abruptly that Tai flinched in response. “You know what-- If you’re not gonna study, I might as well go back home and actually get something done.”

Sora rose from the couch quickly, snatching her book bag from the floor beside the couch and heaving it up over her shoulder in one motion. She heard some scuffling behind her and something being knocked to the floor, and before she knew it, Tai had vaulted over the back of the couch and rushed to her side, grabbing her wrist firmly.

“Sora wait!”

Sora halted, sighing heavily and turning toward her best friend. By then, he had let go of her wrist, and was playing with his watch awkwardly and avoiding her stern gaze. After a moment of watch-fiddling, he looked up at her and almost immediately started laughing.

Caught off guard, Sora felt her face getting warmer, “What’s so _funny_ Tai?”

His laugh trailed off into something a little closer to a chuckle, “S-sorry. You’re just kinda funny when you’re mad—“

She didn’t hear the rest of his sentence over the slam of the front door behind her.

\--

Monday morning, she walked right past him when he greeted her, leaving his hand awkwardly hovering in the air when he lifted it for a high five. He leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms and letting the air out of his lungs in one irritated puff.

“What did you do _this_ time?” he heard Izzy ask from his right, and he let out an even more pronounced grunt.

“She’s just mad because of something the other day, she’ll get over it.”

Izzy shrugged as the class bell rang out and after a quick goodbye, he scurried off to his own class while Tai shuffled down the hallway in the other direction, a crumpled page of notes in his hand as he frantically tried to memorize as much as he could on his way down the hall.

Upon entering the classroom, he noticed that Sora had taken her usual seat, but a girl with dark brown hair was sitting in the spot next to her that was usually reserved for him. _She would_ give away his spot. He took a seat beside—what’s his name again? Tohru? Tohru whatsisface? He wasn’t sure, so he just gave a curt nod and smile and hoped Tohru whatsisface wasn’t a big talker.

“Okay, students. Please put your books onto the floor and get your pencils ready...”

He didn’t need Sora’s help; he could ace this test without her. The teacher drew closer with the test in hand, and he glared at the back of Sora’s head, repeating the words ‘I don’t need you’ in his head over and over. There was a ruffle of papers to his left, and a stack of sheets dropped onto this desk with a heavy flop, and he tore his gaze away from the red-headed girl to look down at the first question.

“What is the scientific name for the common Grizzly Bear?”

_... Damn it._

 

\--

Two days later, Tai was sitting under the tree near the soccer field, flipping through his biology textbook (“Ursus Horribilis? Ohh, that was the answer, wasn’t it?”), occasionally glancing over toward the soccer field where the girls team was practicing. It had been several days since that afternoon at his place, and Sora had managed to effectively block him out of her life. He had to give her credit; she had developed the delicate art of avoiding him to faultless perfection. He had probably only managed to see more than the back of her head only about three times since the incident, and each time she had been scowling at him as if she knew he had spit in her breakfast that morning (he would never do that, of course.)

It was time to end this.

The girls were scattering from the field in different directions, and he saw Sora break off from a smaller group of girls, waving at them and picking up her duffel bag. Tai shut his book and stuffed it into his backpack, slinging it over one arm and quickening his pace to catch up with Sora, whom hadn’t noticed him just yet. He took a deep breath in through his nose, out through his mouth, and trotted up beside her.

“Hey Sora, can I talk to you?”

She didn’t answer or even turn her head to look at him, walking a little bit faster with a furrowed brow, but she did not tell him to leave her alone. Tai took this as a sign and continued.

“Listen, Sora, I wanted to tell you that I’m really sorry about that stuff that happened on the weekend. I was being a bit of a jerk...”

“Yeah, no kidding,” she heard her grumble, still not looking at him, and then she sighed, “But I guess I forgive you.”

“Thanks,” Tai said, a burden suddenly lifted from his shoulders, his walk becoming a little bit bouncier with each step, “If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure I failed that test miserably.”

Sora laughed quietly, bumping her shoulder against his lightly, “You know what? I think it does.” They walked until they reached the crosswalk where they would normally part ways, but Sora turned and asked, “Hey, do you want to come over to my house and watch _Ghost Trappers_? I know we don’t have spinach cake, but I’m sure we can find something to eat.”

Tai laughed, “Sure thing! I’ll race you there!”

Caught by surprise, Sora called him something rude before chasing after him.

 

 


End file.
